by Chris Carter
That didn’t surprise Hunter. ‘How about the mask, any luck with it?’
The sketch Tanya Kaitlin had worked on with the police artist had already been sent to every costume and party shop in the greater Los Angeles area.
Garcia breathed out. ‘So far, no matches. Apparently no one has ever seen anything like it. No score over the Internet either. This mask wasn’t bought from a shop, Robert. He created it himself.’
Hunter had no doubt that that had been the case, but they still had to try.
‘But it’s not all bad,’ Garcia announced. ‘We’ve got one positive result. One you were one hundred percent right about.’
‘And what is that?’
‘The nine-one-one calls.’
On his screen, Garcia clicked and scrolled a couple of times until he found what he was looking for.
‘In the past three months there were four bogus, high-priority, nine-one-one calls made, concerning the general area of Karen Ward’s home address. Two of the addresses given by the caller were to the same apartment block, the other two to neighboring ones.’
‘Any luck when it comes to CCTV camera locations?’ Hunter asked.
Garcia laughed. ‘You would hope so, wouldn’t you? You called it right, Robert – this guy is anything but dumb. He stayed away from payphones, choosing to use four different pre-paid cellphones – no chance of a trace.’
‘Do we have the audio files for the calls?’
Garcia sat back on his chair and gave Hunter a quirky smile. ‘We do now. I just got the email.’
Twenty-Four
Hunter got to his feet and walked over to Garcia’s desk. The email showing on his screen had four different audio file attachments. The first one dated back three months, almost to the date. The last one was dated nine days ago.
‘Let’s go through them chronologically,’ Hunter suggested.
Garcia nodded and double-clicked the first audio file. The time logged for the 911 call had been 10:55 p.m.
DISPATCHER [female voice]: ‘Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?’
MALE VOICE: ‘Well . . . I think I just heard gunshots coming from one of the apartments down the corridor from me.’
The voice carried a somewhat pronounced Southern accent, but what caused both detectives to exchange a worried look was the youth of its tone. The voice sounded like it belonged to someone in his early twenties.
Keyboard clicks.
DISPATCHER: ‘Gunshots? Are you certain, sir? Could it have been just a loud bang, maybe?’
MALE VOICE: ‘No, I don’t think so.’
A short pause.
DISPATCHER: ‘OK, could you describe exactly what you heard?’
MALE VOICE: ‘One thing is for sure, they were arguing again. They argue a hell of a lot, you know. Always at night. Always screaming at each other. But tonight it sounded like they were going mad. I’m quite sure the whole building could hear it. Then suddenly – bang, bang, bang – three loud pops. And now everything has gone church quiet in there. I’m telling you, something isn’t right in that apartment.’
DISPATCHER: ‘OK, sir, what’s the address?’
The address the caller gave the dispatcher would’ve taken the police to the apartment directly below Karen Ward’s.
More keyboard clicks.
DISPATCHER: ‘A unit is on its way now, sir. Could I have your—’
The caller put the phone down.
‘It took around eleven minutes for a black and white unit to respond,’ Garcia said, reading from the email he had received. ‘Their report says that they were quite surprised when a woman, apparently in her mid-twenties, answered the door holding a baby in her arms. The woman, Donna Farrell, shared the apartment with her boyfriend, who works as a night security guard, so he wasn’t in. The officers asked her about any loud bangs or any neighbors who seemed to argue frequently, but she told them that she hadn’t heard any loud noises, or voices, or anything. She also told them that she had never heard any arguments coming from any of the neighboring apartments. Before logging it in as a bogus call, the officers knocked on several other doors. The reply was always the same. No loud bangs. No known arguing neighbors.’ Garcia scrolled down on the email. ‘The call was made from a pre-paid cellphone. Untraceable.’
‘Did they get a location?’ Hunter asked.
Garcia scrolled down a little more. ‘Yeah. The call came from the general location of Karen Ward’s apartment building. He was probably standing right in front of it when he made the call.’
‘Probably.’ Hunter agreed. ‘He had to be close by to be able to clock the response time. OK, let’s check the next call.’
Garcia double-clicked it. The call had come in at 11:08 p.m., fourteen days after the call they’d just heard.
DISPATCHER [male voice]: ‘Nine-one-one, how can I direct your call?’
MALE VOICE: ‘Yes. I live on the corner of East Broadway and Loma Avenue in Long Beach. From my window I have a clear view of the balcony and the windows belonging to the building across the road from me.’
This time Hunter and Garcia exchanged an even more confused look. There was due urgency to the caller’s voice, but it sounded nothing like the one they’d heard in the previous call. Gone was the pronounced Southern accent, replaced by a typical Angelino inflection. The youth of the voice was also gone. The person making the call sounded like he was in his mid-thirties, with a much deeper and darker voice.
DISPATCHER: ‘OK, sir, and what seems to be the problem?’
MALE VOICE: ‘I’m standing at my window right now, and I can clearly see into one of the apartments on the top floor. The curtains are wide open and the lights are all on. There’s a man walking back and forth in there, waving his arms around like a lunatic. The problem is, he’s carrying either a sword, or a machete, or something very similar. Whatever it is, it’s one hell of a menacing-looking weapon, I can tell you that.’
DISPATCHER [now sounding a little more urgent]: ‘Is there anyone else in the apartment with him? Can you see?’
MALE VOICE: ‘That’s why I’m calling. I’ve been watching this guy for the past five or ten minutes, and all he’s been doing, as I’ve said, is walking back and forth in the living room, waving his weapon in the air and shouting at the walls, or so it seemed. But just now I saw this little girl appear at the other window, not in the same room as him, but in the next room along. She must be around twelve or thirteen. She looked terrified. I can’t really see any details because of the distance, but I think she is crying.’
DISPATCHER: ‘A little girl, you said?’
MALE VOICE: ‘That’s right.’
DISPATCHER: ‘OK, sir. Do you have the address of this building?’
The caller gave the address to the dispatcher. Once again, it was the address to Karen Ward’s building.
MALE VOICE: ‘The apartment I’m talking about is the last apartment down the corridor on the top floor.’
DISPATCHER: ‘And you said that you can see the apartment from your window, could you give me your—’
The caller had already disconnected.
‘That would be Karen Ward’s apartment,’ Garcia said. ‘He sent the cops to her apartment?’
Hunter nodded. ‘What was the response time?’
Garcia checked the email. ‘Around ten minutes this time.’
‘Pre-paid cellphone again?’ Hunter asked.
‘You got it.’
Hunter leaned against the edge of Garcia’s desk. ‘OK, let’s try the next call.’
Garcia opened the file. The third call in their list had been logged in twenty-eight days after the second one. It had come in at 11:13 p.m.
DISPATCHER [female voice]: ‘Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?’
MALE VOICE: ‘Umm . . . She’s not breathing. I don’t know what to do. She’s not breathing and it’s all my fault.’
The nervous voice was full of trepidation and strangled on tears. Once again, its tone differed greatly from the previous
two calls. This time it was low and husky, as if the caller were on the last stages of a bad sore throat. The accent had also changed completely, moving from a typical Angelino to a very distinctive Southern Texan twang.
DISPATCHER: ‘Can you tell me your name, sir?’
MALE VOICE: ‘Todd. Todd Phillips.’
Keyboard clicks.
DISPATCHER: ‘And who is the person we’re talking about here, Todd? Who did you say isn’t breathing?’
MALE VOICE: ‘My girlfriend. Her name is Kelly Dixon. You have to help us. Please.’
DISPATCHER: ‘That’s what I’m here for, Todd, but for me to be able to do that I have to ask you a few questions, OK? You said Kelly isn’t breathing. Are you sure? Can you feel a pulse at all?’
MALE VOICE: ‘No, no I can’t.’
More keyboard clicks.
MALE VOICE: ‘You have to send someone to help us. Please, send help.’
DISPATCHER: ‘Help will be on its way very soon, Todd. Now what you need to do is stay calm and give me a few more details, OK? Can you quickly tell me what happened?’
MALE VOICE: ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t. I swear it. I love her.’
DISPATCHER: ‘That’s fine, Todd, I believe you, but you need to tell me what happened, OK?’
MALE VOICE: ‘I don’t know. We had an argument about something silly and I lost my head. I held her. I squeezed, and now she’s not moving. She’s not breathing. You must send help. Please. You must.’
DISPATCHER (she typed as she spoke): ‘OK, Todd. What’s your location?’
As soon as the caller gave the dispatcher the address, he put the phone down.
‘Nine-one-one tried calling the number back,’ Garcia read from the email. ‘But “surprise, surprise” – no reply. Nevertheless they have to follow protocol, so a black and white unit, together with a paramedic team, was dispatched to the location, which took them to one of the buildings across the road from Karen’s. Needless to say that they found no one by the name of Todd Phillips or Kelly Dixon. The apartment in question belonged to an elderly couple, who had lived there for over twenty-five years.’
‘What was the response time for this call?’ Hunter asked.
‘Just under ten minutes.’
Hunter wrote the time down on his notebook.
‘The GPS location recorded for the call,’ Garcia added, ‘matched the address given by the caller, so once again he was probably standing right in front of the building when he made the call.’
‘Because he knew the call would be traced,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘And if he’d made the call from a payphone down the road or from anywhere else, the location wouldn’t match his story. He was supposed to be with his girlfriend, who wasn’t breathing, remember?’ Hunter scratched his chin. ‘No slip-ups.’
Garcia place the cursor over the last attached file. ‘Shall I?’
Hunter gave his partner a single nod.
‘I wonder what kind of bullshit we’ll get now.’
Twenty-Five
The fourth and last call was received exactly five weeks after the third call, and a week before Karen Ward’s murder. It was time-stamped – 11:19 p.m.
DISPATCHER [female voice]: ‘Nine-one-one, what’s the location of your emergency?’
FEMALE VOICE: ‘Two-three-one Loma Avenue – Long Beach.’
Garcia looked at Hunter with wide eyes. ‘It’s a female voice,’ he said. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
Hunter was also caught off guard, but he decided to reserve his comments until he’d heard the entire recording.
FEMALE VOICE: ‘Could you send someone to my house, please?’
The voice sounded scared and filled with emotion.
DISPATCHER: ‘What’s the problem there, ma’am?’
FEMALE VOICE: ‘My ex-husband has just broken into my house. He’s screaming and raving like a lunatic. He’s out of his mind, and he’s a violent man.’
DISPATCHER: ‘OK, and where is he now?’
FEMALE VOICE: ‘Right outside my door. Please, send somebody.’
DISPATCHER: ‘Outside your door? Where are you, ma’am?’
FEMALE VOICE: ‘I’ve locked myself inside my bedroom.’
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Hunter and Garcia heard what sounded like three loud knocks to a door.
DISPATCHER: ‘OK. Has he been drinking? Do you know?’
FEMALE VOICE: ‘Probably. That’s what he always does.’
DISPATCHER: ‘Has he hit you?’
FEMALE VOICE: ‘No. He hasn’t had the chance yet. As soon as he broke through the front door, I ran and locked myself in here. But if he gets in here . . .’
DISPATCHER: ‘OK, ma’am, what’s your name?’
FEMALE VOICE: ‘Rose Landry.’
DISPATCHER: ‘And your address is 231 Loma Avenue – Long Beach?’
FEMALE VOICE: ‘Yes, that’s right.’
Hurried keyboard clicks.
DISPATCHER: ‘OK, a unit is on its way to you now. They won’t be long. Can you stay on the phone with me, Rose?’
FEMALE VOICE (sounding desperate): ‘No, I can’t. I can’t. I’ve got to go.’
The call ended.
Garcia sat back on his chair and ran a hand over his mouth and chin, as if smoothing down an imaginary goatee.
‘This time the address given was to a house just around the corner from Karen’s apartment building,’ he said. ‘Less than thirty seconds away. It belonged to a retired schoolteacher and his wife – John and Judith Marble.’
‘Response time?’ Hunter asked.
Another scroll down on the email. ‘Eight minutes. The fastest time of them all.
Hunter wrote the time down.
‘Now, let me repeat myself here.’ Garcia said. ‘What the fuck is going on? It’s a female voice. Is he working with someone, or was this just a coincidence?’
‘No, not a coincidence, Carlos,’ Hunter said, checking his notes. ‘All four bogus calls were made inside the same thirty-minute interval – between ten-fifty-five p.m. and eleven-twenty-five. Do you remember what was the time logged for Tanya Kaitlin’s nine-one-one call?’
‘Not from the top of my head,’ Garcia replied. ‘But I’m guessing somewhere inside that half-hour bracket.’
‘Eleven-nineteen p.m.,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘All four bogus calls were also made on a Wednesday evening. Karen Ward was murdered two nights ago, on a Wednesday evening.’
Garcia’s gaze jumped back to his computer screen. All four calls had been date-stamped in the usual format – month/day/year. He hadn’t yet worked out that they had all fallen on a Wednesday.
‘If you average the four response times,’ Hunter continued. ‘You come to nine and three-quarter minutes. Round it up, and that’s exactly the average response time the caller told Tanya over the phone.’ He shook his head. ‘This was no coincidence, Carlos. Our killer made all four calls.’
Garcia thought about the last call for a moment.
‘A voice modifier?’ he half stated, half questioned.
‘Audio forensics will confirm it,’ Hunter replied. ‘But with the right equipment, changing a male voice into a female one is just a question of sliding a few faders up and down, that’s all.’
‘He probably also thought that a female voice would be a nice touch,’ Garcia accepted.
‘Certainly less suspicious,’ Hunter agreed. He knew that about 70 to 75 percent of all bogus 911 calls in the USA were made by men, not women. ‘Remember, Carlos, he’d already made three fake calls prior to that one – all using a male voice, all directing Long Beach PD to the same exact area. This was the last call before the actual murder. He wouldn’t want to risk it.’
‘Well, he certainly knew how to fake these calls,’ Garcia said. ‘Because I’ll tell you this, If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought that they were all legit – sometimes tense, sometimes frightened, sometimes anxious, and absolutely no hesitation in his voice. Every question he was asked by the dispa
tcher, he answered it in character. I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy has trained as an actor.’ Garcia rethought his words. ‘Then again, half of this city has trained as an actor.’
Hunter said nothing, but right at the back of his mind, something else began bothering him.
Twenty-Six
Hunter and Garcia spent the next hour revising crime-scene photographs, going over various documents, and trying to obtain a more thorough profile on Karen Ward. Garcia had been searching the Internet for the past thirty-five minutes when he paused and frowned at his computer screen.
‘Wait a second,’ he whispered, leaning forward and placing both elbows on his desk.
Hunter looked at his partner over the top of his screen.
Garcia looked completely absorbed as he began scrolling down the webpage.
‘Something wrong?’ Hunter asked.
Garcia lifted his index finger. ‘I’m not sure yet. Give me a minute.’
Hunter went back to the file he’d been reading, but his thoughts were still on the four 911 calls they’d heard. The more he tried, the less sense he could make of everything – the less sense he could make of everything, the more the stalker theory bothered him.
In general, stalkers were fragile people who were highly impulsive and almost always enslaved to their own emotions, rarely being able to control them. Sure, some were known for being very well organized when it came to certain aspects of their obsession. They observed the object of their affection compulsively because they simply needed to know all there was to know about them. They followed them. They took pictures. They fed the fire of their obsession in any way they could because, the sad truth was, most of them led somewhat boring, unadventurous lives and, strangely, that obsession gave their lives a ‘sense of purpose’, something to live for, and that was the catch.